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Monday, June 16, 2008

National Champions

As some of you may know, for the last two years Coach Boz and I have been moonlighting with SFCF across the bridge for the Marin Rowing Association. SFCF was asked to provide strength and conditioning programming for the girls Varsity junior crew program at Marin Rowing.

This past Sunday, our girls won the National Championship held in Ohio. Marin defeated the reining champions by over three seconds in the final 2k and posted the fastest times at the regatta.

Pray these girls don't show up in one of your classes. They know how to work, very, very hard.

15 comments:

Fantastic stuff. Well done, ladies. I have incredible respect for all rowers. There's no other Crossfit exercise that's more likely to cause me to snog the snake. I almost passed out at Fight Gone Bad this weekend because of it.

Despite Kstar's warning, you should definitely come to class and show us how it's done.

I think they already did come down a couple of years ago and we did a workout that involved a 500m row at the beginning of a longer workout. I think a girl who was in high school leaned over me and said, "You know, you should be rowing faster." I was on pace to do a 1:35.

Great job Ladies! But Kelly, you might want to tell them to be weary of joining us, because JD and I are three time reigning friday night 18 and over San Bruno Mens League Softball champions. We led the league in home runs each year, and tracked down fly balls in the outfield that Poseidon himself would be unable to catch. Rowing contest you say, home run derby I say. By the way, great job monday nighters on Fran. We all pushed each other and put up some solid times. I know many people shattered previous times. Ross broke out the beautiful butterfly kip. Awesome. Thanks for yelling in my face angel, its exactly what I needed at that point in the workout to push me through. See everyone tonight.

As a former SI rower: god dammit. My goat is got when I see Marin succeed. Goat!!

However, as a crossfitter and (occasionally) reasonable person, I *suppose* I can look beyond this. Good job, Marin women! 3+ seconds sounds like open water, or something close to it, which is a humiliating margin of victory in any high-level final.

Also, go West coast rowing! Victories like these are crucial in the re-branding of the sport, from dainty aristo pastime to blistered, barfing, bleeding-calf awesomeness pursued by everyone, everywhere.

This just reinforces my belief that rowers simply must do crossfit. And though it's specious to single out some one factor in training as "the cause" of victory, I really think that crossfit played an important role in this. Therefore: good job, Coaches Kelly and Boz!

Ross, as an SI alum as well, I kind of feel like Marin is our backyard too. At least 20% of my class seemed to come from Marin. You definitely don't see those kinds of numbers going the other way (San Francisco to MArin). And correct me if I am wrong, but my class crew team mostly went to Cal, where they dominated the nation in rowing and produced Olympic silver medalist Sebastian Bea, who is returning for another round this summer. It seems to me the West Coast has a pretty strong heritage of powerful crew teams and that's just from my limited exposure.

Matt: You are absolutely right. West Coast teams, at all levels, have won national championships often enough that it is simply wrong to believe that rowing is an East Coast sport, dominated by East Coast athletes.

But, as we all know, just because a belief is wrong doesn't mean it isn't widely held. And I think this particular belief still is widely held. I'm just hoping, in my old-fashioned way, that a growing mass of contrary data -- bolstered by Marin last weekend! -- will force a shift of opinion.

(I should also point out that some teams from the South are pretty legit -- e.g., UVA women -- and will only become more competitive over the next decade or so.)

I love rowers who crossfit and lift heavy things and thats all i will say...Matt i feel your pain. Every time i PR on a 500m piece my sister is like "dude you should really be sub 1:20 thats pretty lame."but yeah they are in trouble if we have a HR derby.

Just wanted to let you know, I enjoyed the cert this weekend at Camp Pendleton and I didn't get to let you know personally, but I wanted to tell you that you are a great instructor. You just seem to have quite the teaching ability and I appreciate it. Thanks for all your help and instruction!